


bones like old stone

by screechfox



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Lonely!Martin, Season/Series 04, Transformation, it's as shippy as you want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 02:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20884298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: When the Institute burns down, Jon is left changed. He doesn't deal with this, and neither does anyone else.





	bones like old stone

**Author's Note:**

> there's an idea i've been playing with for a long time around jon and the archivist and the archives. this isn't quite that, but it's the closest i've got in a long while. please point out any glaring errors, i redrafted this at near-midnight.

Three days after the Institute burns down, Jon is staring at himself in the mirror.

Intellectually, he can recognise his own image. Every scar and wrinkle and grey hair is where it should be, and for all that his clothes are rumpled and smell of smoke, they are undamaged. Not a single detail is out of place. If anything, he is too much himself — and yet, not enough.

His skin feels ill-fitting, no matter how much he tries to scrub away the echoes of the fire. Beneath, a familiar hunger coils around his throat, demanding that he ask and learn and reveal. Whatever desperate choice he must have made that night, as orange flames blackened old granite, it has left him changed. If there’s a scrap of humanity in the man looking back from the reflection, Jon can’t see it.

The others haven’t noticed yet, too busy with their unexpected survival. Freedom doesn’t mean safety, after all, and while none of them are  _ complaining _ about being alive… Everyone is too concerned with their own issues to keep an eye on a man they think is human and harmless once more.

“Jon?”

Well, perhaps Jon is being unfair. Georgie is observant enough for any of them.

“Jon, are you okay? You’ve been in there for half an hour.”

“I…” For a moment, Jon considers trying to put everything into words. Georgie would listen, she would tell him he needs help — and when it became clear that he isn’t sure he  _ wants _ help, she would throw him off her sofa and onto the street. “I’m fine, Georgie. Lost in thought, that’s all.”

“Can I come in?”

“Okay.”

The bathroom door opens and Georgie hovers in the doorway. Jon doesn’t turn around; it feels safer to look at her through the abstraction of the reflection. He can’t bear to trap Georgie’s image in the dark-wood shelves of his mind. Since the fire, everything has been so terribly clear.

There’s a resignation pooled in the corners of her eyes. Her brows are raised, and he feels an urge to smooth out their furrows with the pad of his thumb.

“You’re a really bad liar, Jon. You know that, right?”

“Sorry. Force of habit.” Jon gives a strained laugh, rather like a cat being strangled.

“If you don’t want to say, you  _ can _ just tell me. I won’t get offended.”

“I’ve never been very good at that kind of thing.” In the mirror, Georgie is staring at him, sad and patient. “I just don’t know what to do with myself now. That’s all.”

“Whatever you want,” Georgie says, pressing her lips together when Jon just laughs and laughs.

As she steps into the bathroom, her movements are slow and wary, like she’s trying to pacify some feral creature. There  _ is _ a certain wild-eyed quality to his expression, so he can’t blame her for her caution. (Or, well, he shouldn’t. It doesn’t stop a bitter resentment curving his mouth downwards.) Her hand is gentle on his shoulder; the warmth of her touch still makes him flinch.

“You’re freezing,” Georgie murmurs.

Jon nods, reaching up to place his hand on hers. Can she feel how paper-thin his skin is, he wonders? His heartbeat is the quiet whir of a tape recorder, preserving every event that happens to him; can she feel  _ that? _

She shivers. He  _ is _ cold.

“You’re sure you’re not going to die?”

“Yes,” Jon says, certain. Even with starvation eating away at him, Jon knows he isn’t the kind of thing that dies anymore. He missed his chance long ago.

They stand like that for what feels like hours, and Jon doesn’t once turn his gaze from the mirror.

When Martin finally shows his face, Jon is staring into the mirror again.

“Jon?” There’s a hesitance to his voice, like Martin doesn’t expect to be heard. Inside Jon’s chest, the recording stops and starts, covered in a sickly distortion that makes Jon feel dizzy.

“Hello, Martin.”

It’s strange: Jon has been trying his hardest not to look at anyone directly, but now Martin is in the room, the opposite urge is rising. Martin is— well, Martin is  _ Martin, _ obviously, but more to the point, Martin is a riddle that Jon aches to solve. Jon wants to catalogue him under the Watcher’s gaze until every facet of Martin’s being is preserved in crystal clarity.

Except Jon doesn’t want that, he reminds himself, no matter how much it could save Martin from the fate he’s thrown himself to. Jon doesn’t want that, because Jon is human. He grips the edges of the sink with both hands, and looks at Martin through the glass. It’s safer that way.

“How have you been?” Jon asks, faintly awkward, when it looks like Martin isn’t planning on saying anything.

“Not great,” Martin answers; Jon can’t even summon the slightest flicker of regret about compelling him. “Dying, and then  _ not _ dying somehow. I’ve been sitting in my flat a lot. I’ve not got much else to do until Peter figures out—” Martin inhales sharply. There’s a crisp high-pitch of static, and the recording in Jon’s chest jams. It hurts like he imagines a heartbreak.

Jon meets Martin’s eyes in the mirror. They’re the pale grey of an autumn fog, he notes, though he has the unerring feeling they used to be different.

“Still not planning to run away.” It’s not a question.

“I can’t, Jon.”

“Right.”

Martin fidgets with the hem of his jumper, a movement so familiar that Jon almost forgets how to breathe. It doesn’t fit the Martin of now, sharp-edged and singular and hopeless, and yet it fits him perfectly.

“What about you?” Martin asks.

“Hm?”

“Why haven’t you run away?”

“I thought I had,” Jon remarks. It comes out more bitter than expected, and Martin raises his eyebrows. “I thought the Institute had burned down, and that was that, but— life can never be that easy, can it?”

“No,” Martin says, distant and understanding all at once. “No, I suppose not.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

“About— me.” Jon sighs, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Doing what I just did. Being what I am.”

Martin sighs too, shifting on his feet.

“I won’t,” he says at last. “I— Even if I thought it would do any good, I… I can’t.”

“Of course,” Jon murmurs.

They both fall into silence. The mirror fogs over gradually, and by the time Jon realises, he can’t see Martin anymore. He turns around, and no one is there.

“Of course,” he says again, shoulders sagging in defeat.

When Jon walks into the prison visiting room, everything becomes very simple.

There are no mirrors, no windows — no way to abstract Jon’s stare from Elias without looking away entirely. It hurts not to look, but Jon tries. He really  _ tries. _ Then the light glints on Elias’ handcuffs and draws Jon’s gaze to those long, elegant fingers, and it’s all over.

They make eye contact. Elias smiles. There are crow’s feet wrinkles around his eyes, and something covetous reaching from the dark of his pupils and into the hollow of Jon’s being. Jon feels the weight of every camera in the room pointing directly at them both. He takes a step back, knees nearly buckling beneath him, but the damage is already done.

He is the proverbial moth to Elias’ flame, and there are so many secrets beneath the slow blink of Elias’ eyes.

“Hello, Jon.” Elias’ voice is smooth and pleasant, full of promises that Jon is far too tired to resist. Jon is trying to hate him, but all he feels is a hunger — a vicious greed that perfectly reflects the one lurking in Elias, insidious and all-consuming. Elias smiles wider. It must be easy for him to see every flicker of avarice in Jon’s core, the  _ need _ to rebuild what has been lost.

“Elias,” Jon acknowledges, forcing his tone into flatness. 

There is Elias, and there is the monster. They are the same, of course, but, well— there is Jon, and there is the Archivist. (There is something else, ink-blooded and paper-tongued.) It hurts to think about; Jon has never done very well with dualities.

“Elias,” Jon repeats, and this time the name crumbles on his tongue like dust. Jon swallows, straightening his back and feeling his hunger sharpen his words. “What’s happening to me?”

Elias’ smile turns from that monstrous pride into something that looks a lot like bliss. He exhales slowly, eyes dancing with wide-pupil euphoria, and when he speaks, his voice is rough.

“Oh, Jon,” he manages, still so  _ goddamned _ condescending. “Do you really need me to tell you?”

“How do I stop it?” Jon asks with a scowl.

Elias laughs, and the answer comes even quicker.

“I don’t know, and even if I did know, I wouldn’t want to tell you. I suspect it’s impossible, of course. Such choices aren’t easy to take back, and you’re in the habit of them, it seems.”

Finally, Jon steps forward and lets himself sink down into the chair across from Elias. 

“I don’t want to be this,” Jon murmurs. It’s true, but— “I’m not sure I can imagine being anything else.”

“I’m afraid that’s so often the way of things,” Elias says, not without regret.

“Was it that way for you?”

Elias laughs, and sighs, and then he tells Jon everything.

**Author's Note:**

> hey fun fact, this is my 21st posted magnus fic, and the first to include martin
> 
> as always you can find me at [screechfoxes](http://screechfoxes.tumblr.com) on tumblr! have a good day!


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